Deathstalker 01 - Deathstalker

sound of conflict.
    Owen found himself face-to-face with the Captain, and they circled each other cautiously, searching for an opening. Their blades slammed together and then sprang apart, and they went back to circling each other, their eyes cold and focused. Hazel and the Investigator stood toe-to-toe and hammered away at each other with their swords, neither giving an inch. Around these two conflicts, the surviving Wampyr attacked the remaining rebels with savage strength and speed, and were astonished to find themselves met with equal force and fury. Jack Random, Ruby Journey and Giles Deathstalker had survived the Madness Maze, and they were as inhuman now as the Wampyr themselves. The old Deathstalker moved among the Wampyr with deadly speed, black blood flying from his blade. He was the first and foremost Warrior Prime of the Empire, brought to the peak of his potential, and no one could stand against him. He cut a vicious path through his foes, human and inhuman, killing all in impunity, unstoppable, in his element at last.
    Random and Ruby stood back-to-back and fought on against a seemingly endless supply of enemies. Random felt like a young man again, strong and sure, his sword an extension of his will. It seemed to him he had never fought as well as he did now, but there were just so many Wampyr, and they were so very hard to kill. Ruby fought with a savage controlled fury, cutting and hacking and ignoring the occasional blade that got past her defenses. Random and Ruby were beyond pain or exhaustion now, fighting at the peak of their abilities, but in the end, it was not enough.
    Gradually, foot by foot, they were driven apart and surrounded by their enemies, like two lone wolves in me midst of a pack of snapping dogs. Random fought on, bloody from a dozen wounds that would have stopped a lesser man, his face calm
    and determined. There were bodies all around him, and eventually the inevitable happened, and he stumbled over one. The Wampyr surged forward from every side, sweeping aside his sword, and they brought him down. He fell hard, still lashing out with his fists as sword after sword pierced his body.
    Ruby saw him fall, and screamed in rage and pain. Of them all, Jack Random had been the only one of the group she'd been impressed by. Her only hero. She would have died for Jack Random. She cut and hacked a path through the press of bodies, forcing the Wampyr back, to stand over Random's unmoving form and defy the Empire to take him from her. A disrupter beam from behind hit her squarely between the shoulder blades, and she fell across Jack Random's body and lay still. Her cloak burned steadily over the hole in her back.
    Tobias Moon moved swiftly through the dead city of the Hadenmen and wondered that it seemed so strange to him. He had never seen the home of his people before, but even so he was a Hadenman and had expected something about the city to be familiar, even welcoming. Instead, he passed between towering ruins of metal and stone whose shapes made no sense to him, gathered together in patterns that defied analysis. He had been among Humanity too long and had adopted their sense of beauty and meaning. He'd have to forget much of what he'd learned, if he was to live among his own people again. If they would have him.
    Finally the buildings and structures fell away, and he came at last to the Tomb of the Hadenmen. It stood alone in a great natural cavern: a vast honeycomb of silver and gold, thickly encrusted with ice. Within its countless cells, thousands of augmented men lay waiting in their endless sleep. Waiting for him to awaken them and unleash the Hadenmen upon Humanity again. Moon stared steadily at the massive Tomb and did not know what to do. Strange lights crawled
    back and forth among the individual cells, as though their occupants were dreaming fitfully of life, and Moon just stood there and watched them.
    He always thought of himself as a Hadenman, because that was what people saw when they looked at him. They saw the golden glare of his eyes and heard the harsh buzz of his voice and kept their distance even as they talked to him. And so he lived among humans for many years, with them, but not of them. Never one of them.
    He remembered little of his time among his own people in the last dying days of the Hadenman rebellion. He'd been quickened aboard ship, between planets, and his first memories were of fighting and battle on a world whose name he never learned. They lost that